Sharing Economy from the Perspective of Life Cycle Thinking

Abstract

This paper presents the popular concept of sharing economy from the perspective of life cycle thinking. The way we consume products and services are rapidly diversifying with the recent rise of sharing economy, and the concept has a potential to drive conventional consumption activities toward environmental and economic sustainability. However, the definition of sharing economy is often obscured, which poses challenge to understand the characteristics of the activity that influences the environmental impact. To clarify the environmental potential of sharing economy, we first provide an overview of the activities characterizing “sharing” from the conventional definition to that of current time. Once the conceptual system boundary of sharing economy is defined, we discuss the environmental potential from the perspective of life cycle thinking. Through the review of case studies from literature, we summarized the type of influence sharing economy could have on the intensity of the environmental impact per product.